Wednesday, Aug 20, 2025 • Brian Lopez : Contact

By Jennifer Cowley, president of the University of Texas at Arlington, for Inside Higher Education.

Higher education institutions must increasingly hold ourselves accountable, not only for what our students accomplish on campus, but also for what they do or don’t do afterward: the jobs they take, the salaries they earn and whether they reliably pay back their student loans. When we talk about student success, we must expand the discussion to include careers, paychecks and financial stability.

This push for accountability isn’t coming just from within. Universities face external pressures as well, from the drumbeat of surveys showing American families are increasingly skeptical of higher education to state and federal governments demanding evidence of the return on their investments. It’s time we better align our outcomes with what the economy demands and the nation needs, placing greater emphasis on the real-world success of our graduates.

Some of this push for accountability now has real teeth. Through federal student loans, Pell Grants and other forms of financial aid, Congress has invested billions of dollars in our nation’s students. That’s the carrot.

Now Congress will compel universities to share in that risk. Under the new federal tax and spending law, every academic program (other than certificate programs) will have a return-on-investment calculation that considers graduate earnings. Low-performing programs will lose access to federal student loans. That’s the stick.

Accountability matters. But as we make universities increasingly responsible for students’ postgraduate outcomes, we must recognize that society does not reward all essential professions equally. Early-childhood educators, social workers, artists and musicians play indispensable roles in shaping the communities we value, yet their compensation rarely reflects the magnitude of their contributions. With this new law, we risk eliminating educational pathways that yield profound societal benefit—and students will lose access to educational opportunities.

A college education should spur intellectual growth and develop students as engaged citizens. But our graduates, their families and our government also expect that their degrees will lead to meaningful jobs, financial stability and repayment of student loans. As president of the University of Texas at Arlington, I accept that responsibility.

Our university has prepared for this moment of accountability, focusing on achieving successful outcomes for our students—ensuring they launch into positions that require college degrees, pay them reasonable wages and justify the costs of their education. To a great extent, our efforts are succeeding. We are one of just 21 universities nationwide recognized with top designations by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education as both an Opportunity University for our graduate outcomes and as an R-1 university for our high level of research output.

Knowing new federal accountability measures were coming, we implemented a comprehensive review of all 180 degree programs at our university, evaluating each through a data-driven approach that tracked our students’ postgraduate outcomes through key metrics such as median wage, earnings-to-price ratio, debt ratio and more. Using data from the University of Texas System and the state of Texas, we identified which students continued on to graduate school, their average debt and their earnings by program. We partnered with data analytics companies Steppingblocks, Gray DI and Equifax to better understand where our graduates are working, their job titles, their repayment of student loan debt, their investment in buying homes and whether they are advancing in their careers.

Our efforts started in the fall 2024 semester as we engaged Faculty Senate and academic leadership in understanding both the likely direction of federal policy and a universitywide view of our outcomes. This wealth of data helped us educate our deans, department chairs and faculty about what outcomes their graduates are experiencing and identify which of our degree programs have clear opportunities to improve their graduate outcomes and ROI.

By February, we’d identified 53 programs that require some sort of improvement action, including eight that need what we call priority action. We provided each of these programs with access to the data, along with support from our academic affairs and university analytics teams. In response, each program created an action plan by the end of the spring aimed at improving student outcomes. The proposed action steps tend to fit into one of two themes: reducing debt or increasing wages.

Through this process, our faculty reflected on important questions: Why do we see different outcomes for B.A./B.S. or B.A./B.F.A. graduates in the same area of study? What skills and knowledge from our programs are most useful for our graduates as they launch their careers? Where are the opportunities for our graduates to earn higher wages? How can we reduce the time to complete our degrees? What changes can we make immediately to improve outcomes for the students we have today?

Shorter degree programs help ensure our students take on less debt. Leaders of our undergraduate programs that require more than 120 hours reflected on how to redesign curricula so they could offer a truly four-year degree; our architecture program serves as an example of one program pursuing reduced credit-hour requirements. Our graduate programs, such as social work, are creating accelerated pathways. Some programs identified opportunities to make better use of the summer and winter sessions for degree progression and examined prerequisites that create bottlenecks.

We also are incorporating a number of tried-and-true measures aimed at making our students more workforce-ready and increasing their wages. This includes increasing co-curricular and experiential learning opportunities, expanding professional development programs, bolstering our career services, and embedding microcredentials and certificate programs into our curriculum.

One example of a wage-boosting initiative is our expanded microcredential program that provides students with free access to training for professional certification in high-tech skills. Nearly 3,000 UTA students participated in this program last year. Our College of Liberal Arts also launched a Global Career Accelerator aimed at expanding microcredentialing opportunities.

Our academic programs are being thoughtful about changes in the curriculum. Our undergraduate English program is adding a professionalization learning requirement to the degree plan, as well as a course called English in Public and Professional Life designed to increase our students’ understanding of professional profiles and portfolios. Our chemistry program is incorporating practical uses of AI into courses. Biology is expanding the number of students engaged in the Achieving Success Through Undergraduate Research and Engagement program, a hands-on, semester-long intensive study of research methods that integrates original student research into formal coursework.

At the university level, we have implemented initiatives that make a UTA education more accessible and reduce debt for our students, 40 percent of whom are eligible for Pell Grants. We are organizing resource workshops to help better connect our academic programs and support services, which include a financial literacy program, the career development center and alumni relations. We have expanded our fundraising, focused on need-based aid. This year we expanded our Blaze Forward program that waives tuition and mandatory fees for qualifying in-state residents whose families make less than $100,000 per year. This fall, 65 percent of our undergraduates will have their mandatory tuition and fees fully covered.

Our efforts aren’t about vanity metrics. They’re about value. UTA graduates are seeing their wages increase at faster rates than their college-educated peers nationally. According to Equifax data, 44 percent of UTA’s first-generation bachelor’s graduates have purchased a home within five years of graduating, and their wages five years after graduating are 89 percent of their parents’ estimated total household wages. These are indicators of not only financial success, but also personal responsibility and long-term stability.

We are appreciative of the federal government’s investment in our nation’s students and the goals of accountability. Our universities must deliver a meaningful return for students, families and American taxpayers alike. We can do so by strengthening the connection between classrooms and careers, helping students land jobs that improve their lives, better our country and reward our government’s investment in higher education.